Page 5 of Personal Escort

Plus there were other reasons, like wanting to avoid a nepotism charge Cara didn’t deserve. She was as qualified to be a Starfish Instrumentation intern as any other Stanford grad.

And there was never any risk of her trying to work her way up through the company. All Cara has ever wanted is to be free as a bird, and I will always do anything in my power to protect that for her.

Keep her out of New York City? Check. Be an understanding ear when she needs to vent? Check.

I’ll be the not-quite-a-brother she’s always wanted. The one who gets her. The one who supports her, no matter what.

CHAPTER FOUR

CARA

I MAY FLY home to New York to visit my Nana way too often, but I know better than to stay with her.

Instead I alternate between staying with my brother and my sister. Ben’s place has the advantage of being quiet, so I stay there if I’ve brought work with me, or I need to study.

This weekend there’s no such need, so I stay at my sister’s townhouse just a few blocks away from my grandmother’s. My entire family lives in a six-block area on the Upper West Side. Even my parents have stayed in here, which means my mother has spent the last twenty years bumping into a non-stop parade of my various stepmothers.

I swear my parents are the most fucked-up people in the world, and any credit for me and my siblings turning out to be normal human beings is full credit to Nana.

I put the finishing touches on my makeup—well, lip balm and mascara over a touch of Elana’s crazy BB cream that’s all the rage, because it’s just Ben and Toby for dinner.

But when your sister is the CEO of a cosmetics company, leaving her house with a bare face is just a non-starter.

I slip my feet into sandals and open my bedroom door just in time to see one of my nephews go sailing down the bannister to the second floor. A shriek follows, then cackling little boy laughter.

Staying at my sister’s is also excellent birth control, as much as I adore all four of my nephews.

Four boys under the age of ten.

Elana is crazy, and I’m pretty sure she’s pregnant again. It stopped being a big exciting announcement two boys ago, but I didn’t miss that she begged off dinner tonight, opting to stay in with her family instead.

With four boys and a husband who encourages roughhousing? The only way she’s skipping sushi with Ben and Toby is if she can’t eat the sushi.

I know I’m right.

If I were a better sister, I’d say something. Tell her how excited I am for her—and I am. Offer to help out—which I could, because my program is flexible enough I could spend more time in NYC.

But right now, all I can think about is Nana’s crazy demand I find a husband.

How the heck am I going to do that?

Not a real husband, of course. That would be insane.

I need a marriage of convenience. Maybe somebody who needs a green card and likes tea.

The din from downstairs grows louder.

“Unca Ben!” The excited cry is followed by a heavyoof. That would be the littlest one leaping into my brother’s arms.

Right. Crazy plans will just have to wait until after sushi.

It takes Ben a few minutes to extricate himself from a spontaneous wrestling match, so by the time we get to Brooklyn, Toby is waiting outside the restaurant for us. He’s standing back from the sidewalk, leaning against the building, and he’s typing on his phone.

Always working, just like Ben. But there’s something different about Toby. Maybe it’s the fact he went to California, that he made a name for himself in an already crowded industry. That he did it on his own terms, in his own way. He owns a majority share in the publicly-traded tech company he founded. A billionaire at thirty, and a philanthropist to rival Bill Gates at thirty-five.

Or maybe it’s that he’s always seen me as more than Ben’s little sister. When I was a teenager, he encouraged me to apply to schools not on the east coast, and ran interference when my family objected. He invited Ben to bring me out to California and arranged for a personal tour of Stanford.

And then there’s all the secret times he saved my butt once I was out there, too.

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